Final Disposition Others divided closets full of mother's things. From the earth, I took her poppies. I wanted those fandango folds of red and black chiffon she doted on, loving the wild and Moorish music of them, coating her tongue with the thin skin of their crimson petals. Snapping her fingers, flamenco dancer, she'd mock the clack of castanets in answer to their gypsy cadence. She would crouch toward the flounce of flowers, twirl, stamp her foot, then kick it out as if to lift the ruffles, scarlet along the hemline of her yard. And so, I dug up, soil and all, the thistle-toothed and gray-green clumps of leaves, the testicle seedpods and hairy stems both out of season, to transplant them in my less-exotic garden. There, they bloom her blood's abandon, year after year, roots holding, their poppy heads nodding a carefree, opium-ecstatic, possibly forever sleep.

— Jane Glazer

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